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just trying to get you to live your life. It’s for your own good. I mean, if I hadn’t had the guts to approach Owen at his show this summer, we wouldn’t have started hooking up in the first place.”
    â€œIn secret.”
    â€œNot important,” said Lu, waving her hand around dismissively. “The point is that you could absolutely kiss Josh tonight if you wanted to. You just have to”—here she put both hands on Tiny’s shoulders and squeezed like those guys who stand behind boxers in boxing rings, coaches or whoever they were—“ believe. You. Can. ”
    â€œThank you, Luella.”
    â€œDon’t call me that.”
    â€œâ€˜You’re welcome’ would be nice.”
    â€œYou can mock me all you want,” said Lu, “but I’m just looking out for you. Besides, I am impervious to mocking. Sticks and stones and all that crap.”
    That wasn’t entirely true, and Lu knew it. Yesterday she had made the mistake of wearing her A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE . . . AND THE SENATE shirt to school. The soccer boys had had a field day.
    Daybrook didn’t have a football team. A lot of city schools didn’t. So the soccer team was the catchall for every testosterone-addled brain in school. The soccer team at Daybrook wasn’t like football teams at other schools or in the movies or whatever. For one thing, they weren’t a bunch of dumb jocks or all, like, Texas forever. They were, for the most part, a special breed of boy Lu liked to call “smart rich assholes.” They slunk around the school and down the street in a Harvard-bound pack, like they owned the island of Manhattan, money rolling off them in waves. For another thing, they sucked. They were the lowest ranked team in all five boroughs. Probably.
    They surrounded her in the fifth-floor hallway, a bunch of hyenas circling a gazelle. Was Lu a feminist? Did she let her armpit hair grow wild under that T-shirt? Would she bake them a pie? Was she going to beat them up? Usually, when this happened (and Lu had a lot of cool shirts, so it happened more than she cared for), Will kept his mouth shut or pretended to check his cell phone or suddenly found the selection of lunch options fascinating. And Lu ignored him, and she ignored the rest of them. She couldn’t let Will see her crack. Any of the others, maybe. But not Will. Never Will.
    But yesterday Will had said, “Hey, Lu, I heard you burned all your bras. Good thing you don’t need them.” The guys had howled. And Lu couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She wheeled on him.
    â€œIf feminists hadn’t burned their bras in the 1970s,” she said, “we would never have had advancements in women’s rights. If we’d never had advancements in women’s rights, the Supreme Court would never have tried a case like Roe V. Wade. If the Supreme Court had never tried Roe v. Wade, abortion would never have been legalized. If abortion hadn’t been legalized, Rachel Keyes wouldn’t have been able to get one last month. And if Rachel Keyes hadn’t gotten that abortion last month, you ”—she pointed her finger at Ben Sternberg—“would be a dad before graduating high school. So,” she said, “what else did you have to say about feminism?”
    No one else said anything.
    â€œYou guys shouldn’t talk so loud in assembly,” Lu said, and went to class.
    She hated Will Kingfield. She hated Will Kingfield.
    So why did she still think about him so much?
    Lightning flashed above the rooftops.
    Lu looked at Tiny and grinned.
    â€œOne Mississippi . . .”
    Tiny grinned back. “Two Mississippi . . .”
    â€œThree,” they said together as thunder rumbled warningly on three. “Ooh, it’s close!” Lu cried, clapping her hands. “Stormpocalypse, here we come!”
    â€œJust ring the doorbell,” Tiny said, looking dubiously up at the